lung-busting crawling.
One blast from Willy and we jumped up and ran forwards, another and we threw ourselves down in the dirt and started to crawl. Up, down, crawl, up, down, crawl; because through pain and Willy we were learning the most fundamental of infantry tactics â âfire and manoeuvreâ.
Partnered up, one of us fired blank rounds of ammunition at an imaginary enemy while the other scurried forwards, dived down and crawled forwards to start shooting, then the other half of the pair did the same. Each running dash covered and protected by shooting fire from the other. A so foolproof simple technique, fire and manoeuvre is at the crux of what the infantry do. A soldierâs bread and butter, his gravy and potatoes, the daily grind of a section, platoon and company; two years later in Afghanistan I would watch images from a helicopter of Royal Marines doing exactly this when assaulting a Taliban compound. Their movements were no more complicated than ours were that afternoon as we dashed forth, dropped down, crawled forwards and fired. Dash-down-crawl-dash-down-crawl. Again and again, throwing ourselves down onto the soggy wet ground, panting, breathless and exhausted. Except we were in Sussex in January not Helmand in July and we werenât wearing 35 lb of body armour like the Marines, nor carrying radios, counter-IED equipment, ammunition and all the other gubbins an infantryman is loadedup with. If I hadnât been suffering so much personal pain at this point I may have even been humbled with appreciation for what it is infantry soldiers do.
As darkness fell, battered, bruised and exhausted, we moved into the woods to set up a platoon harbour. Here, tucked away in the thick of the forest, we would be spending the night, cooking up our gag-inducing boil-in-the-bag meals, changing socks and pants, and notionally rolling out our sleeping bags. The harbour was to be triangular, each of the three sides facing outwards ready to spot and fight the enemy. A thread of twine marking each edge of the triangle was meticulously tied around the trees, forcing military straight lines onto the beech and birch of Hundred Acre Wood. Around our triangle home ran a track for us to move along in the dark which had to be delicately cleared of leaves and twigs that could crackle and snap when walked on, alerting the enemy to our location. Perversely this was contrived to involve yet more crawling through mud, as we swept away branches and foliage until we were all thoroughly pissed off with scraping our knees and elbows along the ground.
The flimsy poncho shelters weâd learned to construct earlier were erected between the trees over shallow trenches as we bashaâd 6 up. Hollow âshell-scrapesâ were dug beneath these basha, each long enough for the tallest person to lie down and wide enough for two to lie side by side. With my limbs already fatigued from crawling, an entrenching tool (a spade: for some reason the army donât call a spade a spade) was thrust into my hands and I started to scratch away at the dense soil, digging my own coffin hole. By now I was dead on my feet. All I wanted to do was stop, curl up on the cold, hard forest floor and let sleep take me away. My stomach was empty, my legs were weary, and I couldnât care less if the enemy found us, if it brought an end to the agonizing crawling.
Then finally, as midnight approached, I rolled out my sleeping bag and wriggled in.
Once the crawling and digging stopped I became painfully cold. My damp clothing and sodden boots chilled my body to the core. People donât realize quite how deadly the British climate is. That night, as the January air dipped below freezing, the dayâs drizzle turned to snow and I shivered despairingly in my sleeping bag, worried that if I fell asleep I might wake up dead, frozen in my self-dug grave. But I need not have worried because someone had come up with a ridiculously complex sentry rota
One blast from Willy and we jumped up and ran forwards, another and we threw ourselves down in the dirt and started to crawl. Up, down, crawl, up, down, crawl; because through pain and Willy we were learning the most fundamental of infantry tactics â âfire and manoeuvreâ.
Partnered up, one of us fired blank rounds of ammunition at an imaginary enemy while the other scurried forwards, dived down and crawled forwards to start shooting, then the other half of the pair did the same. Each running dash covered and protected by shooting fire from the other. A so foolproof simple technique, fire and manoeuvre is at the crux of what the infantry do. A soldierâs bread and butter, his gravy and potatoes, the daily grind of a section, platoon and company; two years later in Afghanistan I would watch images from a helicopter of Royal Marines doing exactly this when assaulting a Taliban compound. Their movements were no more complicated than ours were that afternoon as we dashed forth, dropped down, crawled forwards and fired. Dash-down-crawl-dash-down-crawl. Again and again, throwing ourselves down onto the soggy wet ground, panting, breathless and exhausted. Except we were in Sussex in January not Helmand in July and we werenât wearing 35 lb of body armour like the Marines, nor carrying radios, counter-IED equipment, ammunition and all the other gubbins an infantryman is loadedup with. If I hadnât been suffering so much personal pain at this point I may have even been humbled with appreciation for what it is infantry soldiers do.
As darkness fell, battered, bruised and exhausted, we moved into the woods to set up a platoon harbour. Here, tucked away in the thick of the forest, we would be spending the night, cooking up our gag-inducing boil-in-the-bag meals, changing socks and pants, and notionally rolling out our sleeping bags. The harbour was to be triangular, each of the three sides facing outwards ready to spot and fight the enemy. A thread of twine marking each edge of the triangle was meticulously tied around the trees, forcing military straight lines onto the beech and birch of Hundred Acre Wood. Around our triangle home ran a track for us to move along in the dark which had to be delicately cleared of leaves and twigs that could crackle and snap when walked on, alerting the enemy to our location. Perversely this was contrived to involve yet more crawling through mud, as we swept away branches and foliage until we were all thoroughly pissed off with scraping our knees and elbows along the ground.
The flimsy poncho shelters weâd learned to construct earlier were erected between the trees over shallow trenches as we bashaâd 6 up. Hollow âshell-scrapesâ were dug beneath these basha, each long enough for the tallest person to lie down and wide enough for two to lie side by side. With my limbs already fatigued from crawling, an entrenching tool (a spade: for some reason the army donât call a spade a spade) was thrust into my hands and I started to scratch away at the dense soil, digging my own coffin hole. By now I was dead on my feet. All I wanted to do was stop, curl up on the cold, hard forest floor and let sleep take me away. My stomach was empty, my legs were weary, and I couldnât care less if the enemy found us, if it brought an end to the agonizing crawling.
Then finally, as midnight approached, I rolled out my sleeping bag and wriggled in.
Once the crawling and digging stopped I became painfully cold. My damp clothing and sodden boots chilled my body to the core. People donât realize quite how deadly the British climate is. That night, as the January air dipped below freezing, the dayâs drizzle turned to snow and I shivered despairingly in my sleeping bag, worried that if I fell asleep I might wake up dead, frozen in my self-dug grave. But I need not have worried because someone had come up with a ridiculously complex sentry rota
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